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Hey Steve, been following you for years, appreciate you sharing your knowledge. I have an opportunity this summer to travel up to a placer operation outside of Dawson City. The mine's owner is going to allow me to detect his tailings which, from a couple wash plants, is screened at 5/8" and the other at 3/4". I have used a GPX 5000 for a number of years but assume I should switch over to VLF for this trip. Without wasting too much of your time could you advise me on what I might expect gold wise (gold in quartz, nuggets) and in your opinion the best way to prospect for gold in these tailings. I will re-read your articles as related to this subject. Thank you sir.

Pro is less weight on your arm reducing arm strain. Con is you are wearing a harness? Mine is actually a small rucksack containing needed items so in my case there in no downside. I wear it even if I use a light detector that does not need the bungee support.

Links to manuals for detectors new and old....... http://jb-ms.com/Detectors/Manuals/
Prospecting detectors excel at handling mineralization. The Minelab GPX 5000 in my opinion has more and better settings for more diverse mineralization settings than any other detector currently available which combined with the over 100 coils available for it makes it the standard to beat in that regard.

When talking about pulse induction detectors the two most common coils are DD and mono. A DD has two coils, one transmit and one receive. The mono has a single coil that alternates between transmit mode and receive mode. Each manufacturer has owners manuals available for free download on their websites. It is a good way to learn what a model can do and of course basic operating instructions.

A week ago I started an informal survey on seven US metal detecting oriented prospecting forums including this one.
The survey was not meant to prove anything per se. I was basically just curious to see what the detectors were that were employed to actually find gold nuggets in the last year.
The survey has many shortcomings. It only polls people who were on the US forums in the last week who cared to respond. The forums have tended as a whole to be Minelab oriented and so it is not surprising results might skew in that direction. Still, I got a large number of responses and so some conclusions can be drawn.
I eliminated duplicate and joke responses. I eliminated a couple borrowed units. It was winnowed down to just detectors that found gold for their owners in the last year. Everything else was pretty straight forward. The only thing of note is I put a couple Gold Bug SE responses under the Gold Bug Pro because they are basically the same detector. The SE was just a precursor model. Everything was compiled on a spreadsheet and totaled.
114 people responded as having used 220 detectors to find gold nuggets. That is an average of a couple detectors per person but the reality is a lot of people owned three detectors, and then quite a few just one detector. In general you could say many nugget hunters own a couple PI detectors (or a PI and a GPZ) plus a good VLF detector. If you really want to generalize things your could say people own a couple Minelab PI type detectors and a Fisher VLF. The Gold Bug 2 and the Gold Bug Pro were the runaway favorites in the VLF category.
Tesoro is conspicuous in their absence. Only one Lobo ST listed. I was a bit surprised to see not one Garrett AT Gold listed. Except for a few ATX units Garrett is pretty much a no-show. White's does a little bit better but still only just over a dozen units out of 220. The TDI PI models are the most popular alternative to the Minelabs with 8 listed.
As I noted Fisher totally dominates the VLF detectors with the Gold Bug 2 and Gold Bug Pro. And I was surprised at the very large numbers for both the SDC2300 and GPZ7000. The GPZ in particular due to it being very expensive and out for only the last 6 months. The adoption rate is phenomenal in my opinion.
Here are two sets of results. The first is simplified for easy digestion. I have lumped similar models together and not listed onesies and twosies. The second list is the full per model breakdown. Make of it what you will, and thank you for participating!
Simplified Results:
51 GPX5000/4500/4000 33 GPZ7000 33 SDC2300 32 Gold Bug 2 15 Gold Bug Pro 13 GP3500/3000/GPExtreme 8 White's TDI/DIPro/TDISL/SPP 5 White's GMT/GM3/VSAT 5 Nokta FORS Gold 4 Makro Racer 4 X-Terra 705 3 Garrett ATX 3 XP DEUS
Full Results:
33 GPZ7000 33 SDC 2300 32 Gold Bug 2 31 GPX5000 15 Gold Bug Pro 11 GPX4500 9 GPX4000 6 GP3000 5 GPExtreme 5 FORS Gold 4 Makro Racer 4 X-Terra 705 3 Garrett ATX 3 White's GMT 3 White's TDI 3 TDI Pro 3 XP DEUS 2 GP3500 2 Fisher F19 2 CTX3030 1 TDI SL 1 White's SPP 1 Troy X5 1 XT17000 1 SD2200V2 1 SD2100V2 1 Tesoro Lobo ST 1 White's GM3 1 White's V/SAT 1 Minelab F1A4 1 Garrett Scorpion

This is an informal survey, just out of curiosity. For those of you who have been out prospecting in the last year (back to Sept 2014) and actually have found gold nuggets, what detector or detectors did you find the gold with? The poll is not meant to prove anything. I am just wondering what detectors are most commonly in use now for finding gold nuggets by those who are actually finding the gold.
I am posting this on the most of the active US forums so please do not post your answer in more than one place. In a week I will compile all the answers from all the forums and post the results back to each one. Thanks in advance for you participation.
I own a number of units but so far in the last year my gold was found with the Minelab GPZ 7000, SDC 2300, and a few nuggets in trashy areas with the Makro Racer.

Underwritten for you no doubt Ricky. Many novices on the other hand would think most of it over their head, so just goes to show. I don't regret buying it. Either way, it is definitely overpriced. It is hard to print small runs of books at anything like a reasonable cost.

The FCC was not testing the detector, just certifying the wireless headphone system. It is almost identical to that used on the Minelab CTX 3030 but on a slightly different frequency. The CTX uses the Minelab WM10 wireless module and the GPZ uses the WM12 wireless module.
I really like the wireless audio. The WM10 and WM12 each have their own speaker and so are a remote speaker option you can clip to your belt, pocket, or backpack strap. I mount mine on my left shoulder as I have better hearing in my left ear. The module also has a standard 1/4" jack so you can use most normal metal detector headphones with the module.
Minelab is using a proprietary system that reduces the lag inherent in most Bluetooth systems. That is why it needed FCC approval versus using an already approved off the shelf design.

Hi everyone,
Sorry, I have been a very busy guy lately.
Chris, JP, and I made several entries on the Minelab website at http://www.minelab.com/treasure-talk which sums it up.
Here is the owners manual http://www.minelab.com/__files/f/262220/4901-0176-1%20Inst%20Manual%20GPZ%207000%20EN.pdf
And full color sales brochure http://www.minelab.com/__files/f/261752/4907-0796-1%20GPZ%207000%20Brochure%20US%20English%20(FULL%208P)%20WEB.pdf
Anything specific you want to know? Please do look over the information at the links first but anything you can't find an answer for I am happy to try and help with. Here is the answer to the biggest question. $12,495 MSRP and $9,999 minimum advertised price (MAP). Yes, it is expensive. But yes, it is the most powerful consumer metal detector made for nugget detecting on the planet.

Funny, I talk to the people who file the patents and you would be surprised on some of the opinions on that issue. There is no doubt however that there is important stuff going on with the transmission side as well. I simply was trying to avoid the idea that batteries has some kind of direct bearing on VLF detector capability.
No doubt your reading trumps real in world use. I will leave you to it then. I don't think this forum is big enough for the both of us Chuck so I will leave this one to you and I will stay over at mine. Best of luck to you on your mining ventures.

PI is a separate issue, but even there the old days of more power equals more depth is near an end. More transmit power does not automatically equate to more depth. More transmit power definitely eats batteries quicker, but paradoxically can result in poorer depth in VLF detectors.
I appreciate you are trying to be informative Chuck. Lots of good stuff, much of it helpful. I just want to make sure that people do not get the idea that the batteries used in a VLF detector offer any idea of the performance of the detector. That simply is not the case with modern VLF metal detectors. In PI units you can make a loose connection there, but as I said, going forward that is going to change. These days it is more about the receiver end and signal processing than it is transmitter power.

Chris is being a bit definitive about the small gold capabilities of the Nokta given that I do not know that anybody has determined yet how small the gold is that it will detect with its small coil. Despite what Geowizard indicates battery size has nothing to do with power in VLF detectors. It does have a bearing in pulse induction detectors so far but that limitation also is being overcome with more modern detectors. The Nokta is in my opinion one of the deepest penetrating VLF nugget detectors currently available. Other well regarded VLF detectors like the Fisher F75 and Teknetics T2 also use four AA batteries. In cases where more batteries are used, it usually provides more battery life, not more depth. Still, I agree with Chris in that small gold performance is a complex mix of gold size and ground conditions. The Nokta with small coil will likely air test better on small gold than the SDC 2300. But once you put the gold in the ground mineralization begins to rapidly work against a VLF. It does not take too much at all for the SDC to overcome any advantage a VLF may have. The Gold Bug 2 will clearly hit smaller gold than a SDC 2300 in low mineral ground, but as mineralization increases there is a crossover point where the SDC outperforms the Gold Bug 2. The SDC 2300 has largely negated any advantage VLF detectors have had on small gold except for that remaining in low mineral locations. The REAL reason to choose one over the other is cost. The Nokta costs far less. The price difference for the SDC 2300 can only be made up by finding gold with it. So you have to be realistic about your detecting ability. If a person will never do more than find a few small nuggets may as well do that for under a grand. The other aspect of course is discrimination. If digging everything is a problem trading power for discrimination capability can be a reasonable choice, but it is very dependent on location and personal tolerance for digging junk. Given you already have a PI it seems reasonable to think trash is not your big problem. You are happy with the TDI except for its small gold capability. If that is the case, the obvious step up is the SDC 2300. It solves the stated issue you have with the TDI. I can't say enough good things about the SDC 2300. My own TDI will be going up for sale soon.